Jewish Survivors of Nazi Camps Protest Reburial of Hitler’s Victims

September 4, 1958

TEL AVIV (Sep. 3)

An Israeli organization of survivors of the Nazi holocaust, Sheerit Hapleita, protested today West Germany’s intention of referring the remains of those who were murdered in the Bergen Belsen camps and buried in common graves. It called such action a “real defilement of the dead and a deep offense to human feelings.”

In an open letter to the entire Israeli press, the survivors’ organization hit the alleged Franco–German agreement to separate Jews and others and rebury them in a special ceremony. “We ourselves helped carry the remains of our dead along with others into the common cemetery and it was already then impossible to identify the bodies, owing to the state of decay.”